Disputes Flare Up In Afghan Talks

December 1, 2001|By Steven Erlanger The New York Times

BONN, Germany — Negotiations on a future government for Afghanistan stalled on Friday, after the leader of the Northern Alliance refused to authorize his delegation to submit a list of proposed candidates for a new, temporary administration intended to be representative of the nation as a whole.

In Kabul, the alliance leader, Burhanuddin Rabbani, also questioned the whole point of the talks, saying any new temporary government could wait a month or two for elections.

Rabbani also said that the former king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, should be given no special role and that any international security force should be limited to about 200 people.

Delegates and diplomats said that the Northern Alliance was stalling for time, trying to consolidate its hold on power and had demanded a break of 10 days in the talks to return to Kabul for consultations before it put forward its list of candidates.

But the U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, who is running the talks, told the alliance delegation leader, Yunus Qanooni, that such a delay was unacceptable. The alliance should submit its names no later than this morning, Brahimi said.

"Rabbani has been dragging his feet right along," said a senior Western diplomat, "on the theory that the longer he delays things, the more power they may have." Rabbani is the former president of Afghanistan, ousted by the Taliban.

The United States is asking Russia and Iran, which have closer ties to Rabbani, to press him to live up to his stated commitments to abide by the results of the talks in Germany and to stop blocking the work of his delegation.

Qanooni, too, has pledged to Brahimi and foreign diplomats that the alliance would negotiate in good faith and abide by the results. But Rabbani's comments on Friday seemed to undercut the pledges of his delegation, and of his promise to step down once a new administration is formed.

Some members of the Northern Alliance, a loose collection of ethnic, political and religious groups dominated by minority Tajiks and Uzbeks, said that the alliance could very likely split over the impasse. They suggested that a challenge to Rabbani's authority could come from inside the alliance, from more Western-oriented figures such as the foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, and Qanooni, the interior minister.